[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 98 (Monday, July 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
         COMMEMORATION OF 50TH ANNI- VERSARY OF WARSAW UPRISING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise this evening in support of the 
resolution which passed this House earlier today that pays tribute to 
the courageous people of Poland on their upcoming 50th anniversary of 
the Warsaw uprising.
  House Joint Resolution 388, sponsored by myself with the staunch 
support of the full Foreign Affairs Committee, its chair, Lee Hamilton 
of Indiana, and its ranking member, Ben Gilman of New York, 
commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising of August 1, 
beginning August 1, 1944, through the middle of September of that year 
in which 250,000 Polish citizens lost their lives defending against 
Nazi and Communist aggression. I ask my colleagues to join me this 
evening and the American people in remembering the history of that 
period and memorializing those that withstood the cruelest annihilation 
because they stood in the path of two brutal aggressors. The Warsaw 
uprising lasted nearly 2 months. During the revolt, the Soviet Army 
stood on the east bank of the Vistula River and let the Nazi forces 
brutally destroy Polish resistance and reduce Warsaw, that nation's 
capital city, to rubble.
  The Poles, caught between two terrible, destructive ideologies, put 
up a courageous effort for 63 days led by the Polish Home Army, the 
armed hand of the Polish Underground State, supported by elements of 
the Polish underground partisan groups, and the entire Warsaw 
population of ordinary people, men, women, and children. Although 
severely outnumbered and armed with only hand-held weapons and gasoline 
filled bottles, they fought valiantly against German Panzier Divisions. 
The resistance held major portions of the city against insuperable 
odds, and suffered extreme hardship, retribution and personal 
sacrifice.
  The nations of the world, stood by without giving effective help at a 
time when Polish Army units were helping to liberate France, Belgium, 
and Holland. Appeals for food, arms, ammunition, and antiarmor weapons 
answered by Allied air drops, were all too late and ineffective--none 
at the proper time nor anywhere near the size of the need. The air 
drops were made at great cost to the human lives of the members of the 
Polish Squadron of the Royal Air Force, the Canadian Air Force and 
daylight flight of 110 United States Flying Fortresses.
  After the revolt was crushed, under direct orders from Hitler to 
annihilate the capital, the German Army systematically destroyed the 
city of Warsaw. At the war's end, Warsaw, the center of the national 
life, culture, and religion, had nearly 70 percent of her buildings in 
ruins.
  The loss in Warsaw, which history must remember, was staggering. But 
due to the Communist takeover of that nation after the war, so much of 
their tragic history was suppressed. More people died in the Warsaw 
insurrection than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, and the 
destruction of Warsaw was more complete than either of those cities. 
During the war, Warsaw lost more dead than the total number of American 
soldiers killed on all fronts.
  President Clinton paid special tribute to these important days in 
Polish history during his recent visit to Warsaw. The Nations of the 
World and our Vice President will assemble in Warsaw on August 1 to 
commemorate the 50th anniversary of this tragic and unnecessary loss of 
human life and the heroism that it represents.
  During this week in order to commemorate this poignant reminder of 
the triumph of human spirit over adversity, I would like to offer a 
chronology of events surrounding that massacre and insert into the 
Record and read into it during extension of remarks throughout this 
week excerpts from the book, ``The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under 
German Occupation, 1939 through 1944,'' by Richard Lucas.
  This evening, I submit for the Record a chronology of those events, 
along with the beginning of that history, and just reading one passage 
from that book:

       The murdering reached so feverish an intensity by August 7 
     that one eyewitness had the impression everyone in Warsaw 
     would be decimated: When we passed No. 9 Gorczewska Street (a 
     house which belonged to nuns), we were called into the house 
     and ordered to carry out the corpses which were there. The 
     courtyard was a dreadful sight. It was an execution place. 
     Heaps of corpses were lying there; I think they must have 
     been collecting there for some days, for some were already 
     swollen and others quite freshly killed. There were bodies of 
     men, women and children, all shot through the backs of their 
     heads. It is difficult to state exactly how many there were. 
     There must have been several layers carelessly heaped up. The 
     men were ordered to carry away the bodies--we women were to 
     bury them. We put them in anti-tank trenches and then filled 
     them up. In this way, we filled up a number of such trenches 
     in Gorczewska Street, I had the impression that during the 
     first days of the Rising everybody was killed.

  This evening, let me say that on behalf of all those who believe in 
freedom, in the cause of freedom, and the people of Poland who built 
that city of Warsaw back brick by brick after the war, our hearts are 
with them during this most poignant memorial period of a most tragic 
part of their history.
  Madam Speaker, I include the following documents referred to in my 
special order, as follows:

                    The Warsaw Uprising: Chronology

            (Prepared by the Congressional Research Service)

       September 1, 1939.--Germany invades Poland.
       September 16, 1939--Warsaw falls to German forces.
       September 17, 1939--Soviet forces cross eastern Polish 
     border.
       October 5, 1939.--Poland surrenders to Germany.
       October 1940.--Germany establishes and seals Warsaw Ghetto. 
     Over 100,000 die of starvation or disease before Ghetto 
     uprising in 1943.
       June 22, 1941.--U.S. Government states that Polish borders 
     are ``immutable.''
       April 19, 1943.--Warsaw Ghetto uprising begins. German 
     forces attack the ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization). When 
     uprising quelled on May 16, 56,000 in the Ghetto have been 
     killed.
       November-December 1943.--Teheran Conference. Stalin tells 
     FDR, Churchill that he wants East Prussia and territory west 
     to the Curzon Line. FDR apparently gives ambivalent 
     responses, concentrating on efforts to keep Russia in the 
     war, engage Russia in the Pacific War, then estimated to last 
     at least another 2 years. Churchill later tells Poles' London 
     government that in interests of security, Curzon Line should 
     be west Russian border, but that Poland will be 
     ``compensated'' with part of eastern Germany. The three 
     leaders discuss the make-up of the UN and the Security 
     Council, having in mind the postwar order and how they would 
     manage it.
       December 1943.--FDR tells Mikolajczyk, provisional Prime 
     Minister of Polish government-in-exile in London, that US 
     will not go to war with Russian to defend Poland interests. 
     FDR apparently indicated that, in principle, he favored 
     border alterations for Poland, with Russia moving frontier 
     west to the Curzon Line.
       June 7, 1944.--Russian forces invade German-held Poland. 
     Over the next 6 weeks they push German forces back, despite 
     some setbacks in northern Poland.
       July 28, 1944.--German officials in Warsaw call 100,000 
     Warsaw youths to duty to build ``fortifications'' around 
     Warsaw against Russian forces. The call-up raises tensions in 
     the city, with families recalling earlier instances in which 
     those called were sent to concentration and labor camps.
       July 31, 1944.--Russian forces reach Warsaw suburb of 
     Praga, on eastern banks of the Vistula.
       August 1, 1944.--Warsaw uprising begins. The lightly armed 
     ``Home Army'' of Gen. Komorowski succeeds in gaining of much 
     of the city for a week. German forces counterattack, using 
     the Luftwaffe to bomb sectors to the city beginning Aug. 4, 
     then moving in the armored forces to level buildings and set 
     neighborhoods on fire. Aug. 12-14 FDR and Amb. Harriman ask 
     Stalin to allow U.S. bombers from Italy and France to bomb 
     German positions, drop supplies to Home Army. Stalin refuses.
       September 1944.--Rebels' resistance steadily weakens. By 
     mid-month Stalin allows a few US, British, and Soviet supply 
     flights; in smoke over city, air drops often fall into 
     German-held sectors. Mikolajczyk, desperate for Soviet help, 
     agrees to give 14 of 18 cabinet seats to representatives from 
     Soviet-controlled Lublin Committee.
       October 2, 1944.--Uprising collapses, and Germans regain 
     control of the entire city. Home Army suffers 15,000 killed 
     or missing in action; 250,000 civilians die. Germans lose 
     17,000 killed or missing in action.
       January 1945.--Russian forces enter the city as German 
     forces retreat.
       February 1945.--Yalta Conference. US favors a ``free and 
     independent Poland'', but recognizes Soviet control there. 
     Churchill endorses western Polish border at the Oder-Neisse 
     line. Big Three agree that Lublin Committee under Edward 
     Osobka-Morawski, a Soviet puppet, should organize a 
     government. But Stalin refuses US-British request to allow 
     their observers into Poland. Final settlement or borders to 
     be left to a peace conference and a resulting treaty.
       July 1945.--US, Britain withdraw recognition from London-
     based Polish government and recognize Osobka-Morawski's 
     provisional government.
       January 17, 1947.--Elections take place in Poland. 
     Supporters of Boleslaw Bierut, Osobka-Morawski's successor, 
     gain 382 of 444 seats, US, Britain denounce the elections as 
     neither free nor fair.
                                  ____


   Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944

                           (By Richard Lucus)

       The Poles had planned for years to launch an uprising when 
     the Germans were at the point of collapse, and there was a 
     possibility of securing assistance from the western Allies. 
     After the battle of Stalingrad, it was apparent that Poland's 
     liberation would come from the East, not the West, and thus 
     there was a great deal of discussion concerning what the 
     policy of the AK (Polish Home Army) should be toward the 
     advancing Soviets.
       * * * in eastern Poland during the early months of 1944, 
     military cooperation by the AK with Soviet armed forces broke 
     down, resulting in the dissolution of AK units by the 
     Russians and the conscription of Polish soldiers into the 
     Soviet army. There were also several instances of the Soviet 
     killing Polish officers. In the face of these Soviet actions 
     against the Poles, Bor asked for a western Allied Commission 
     to be sent to Poland and witness what was going on there. 
     Mikolajczak raised the matter with Churchill even arguing at 
     one point that a British liaison officer dispatched to Wilno 
     would at least help the AK in the region to function 
     independently as the representative of the Polish government 
     in London. Churchill demurred on the grounds that the Soviets 
     would assume that any westerner there was a spy.
       Warsaw, the last major city between the Soviet front and 
     Berlin, was tenuously held by the Germans.
       On July 22, the German commandant of the Warsaw garrison 
     ordered the evacuation of women and auxiliary service help 
     from the city. Large numbers of soldiers and police were 
     stripped from the capital for service elsewhere, leaving for 
     a time only SA units. The moment Varsovians had waited for 
     for five years had finally arrived: the liberation of Warsaw.
       German residents sold their possessions for almost nothing 
     and clogged the roads leading westward to their own country.
       As Germans streamed out of the city, Poles were told, 
     unconvincingly not to believe the rumors that the Russians 
     were at Warsaw's doorsteps and not to abandon their places of 
     work.
       Hitler was aware of the panic that gripped his people in 
     Warsaw. Shaken and injured in the right arm by the attempt on 
     his life at the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg, the aging leader 
     of the Germans had no intention of abandoning Warsaw, the 
     loss of which would have been a major catastrophe in the 
     continuing ability of the Wehrmact to keep the Russians from 
     the German homeland. Within a week of the assassination 
     attempt, Hitler appointed an ascetic Austrian intellectual, 
     General Reiner Stahel, to take charge of the defense of 
     Warsaw. A courageous man with steel-like nerves, 
     Stahel's specialty was defending cities.
       In the last days of July there was a considerable increase 
     in the numbers of arms dumps liquidated by the Gestapo; and, 
     by arrests of Poles responsible for organization, the Germans 
     indicated preparations for an attack on Polish military 
     formations. Machine-gun posts were simultaneously set up at 
     various points in the streets, while at a few key points, 
     like Zoliborz Viaduct, tanks were drawn into position. These 
     preparations supported claims that German authorities were on 
     the verge, any day, of putting into execution their long-
     completed but hitherto not implemented plan for the wholesale 
     removal of the male population of the capital.
       In an effort to crush Polish hopes that they would be able 
     to assist the Russians from within the city, the Germans went 
     on a spree of arrests, deportations and executions. And just 
     a few days before the uprising actually occurred, the Germans 
     found an AK cache of 40,000 grenades, which reduced by half 
     the number available to units on the day of the upheaval.
       Most Poles, in anticipation of liberation, continued to 
     train themselves in the use of weapons and ammunition. People 
     who never had military experience gathered in private homes, 
     six or seven to a group, once a week. And once a month they 
     had maneuvers; in order to not cast suspicion of what they 
     were up to, they left Warsaw for their practice. One man used 
     to stand in front of a mirror for hours to see how he was 
     demonstrating the use of a rifle; he did this repeatedly, so 
     he would be flawless in making a presentation to a group of 
     neophytes.
       For some time prior to the summer of 1944, Moscow Radio 
     urged the Poles to rise up against the Germans. In May 1994, 
     * * * the Communist Poles in the Soviet Union * * * 
     criticized the AK for its alleged lack of action against the 
     enemy.
       * * * the Chairman of the Union of Polish Patriots, Wanda 
     Wasilewska, chimed: ``Do not believe those who call up to 
     idleness and inactivity. Our slogan is merciless, a deadly 
     fight with the enemy at every doorstep.''
       Although such pleas had been repeated with monotonous 
     regularity for some time, those that came during the last 
     days of July, when Soviet forces were at the Vistula, had 
     special significance.
       At 8:15 P.M., on July 28, the day the Russians formally 
     announced the shelling of Praga, a Warsaw suburb, Moscow 
     Radio broadcast:
       Fight the Germans. * * * The Polish Army now entering 
     Polish territory, trained in the USSR is now joined to the 
     People's Army to form the corps of the Polish Armed forces, 
     the armed arm of our nation in its struggle for independence. 
     * * * They will all together with the Allied Army, pursue the 
     enemy westward, wipe out the Hitlerite vermin from the Polish 
     land, and strike a mortal blow at the beast of Prussian 
     imperialism. * * *
       Again the next day, another impassioned plea called the 
     Poles to arms repeated several times on the Russian-sponsored 
     broadcasting station, Kosciuszko.
       The closeness of Soviet armies to Warsaw, the mood of the 
     Poles in the capital, and the large political stakes involved 
     convinced Bor and some of his key advisers that Warsaw was 
     ripe for an uprising. Based on faulty intelligence 
     information * * * Bor gave an order--authorized by Government 
     Delegate Jankowski, who had been given plenipotentiary power 
     in this matter--to launch an uprising in the capital on 
     August 1, 1944.

                          ____________________